


Families Can Be Found Again

by XtaticPearl



Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Avengers Family, Civil War (Marvel), Fix-It, Friendship, Gen, Iron Man 3, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-04
Updated: 2016-05-04
Packaged: 2018-06-06 08:35:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,771
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6746866
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/XtaticPearl/pseuds/XtaticPearl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tony wakes up and has a loud whining session before he notices that Bucky Barnes is sitting on the couch, looking like a school-kid. Steve looks like he’s going to cry. Sam looks cautious like a bomb is going to burst. Tony blinks at Bucky before giving him his personal hair stylist’s number.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Families Can Be Found Again

When Tony found out about DC, he learns that _his_  work, his contribution to Project Insight, was being misused for something nefarious to the extent of Hydra. Feeling furious, cheated and downright pissed, he calls Nick but doesn’t get through. So he tries calling Steve and gets through because honestly, Steve thinks he can block calls and stay underground but it **is**  a StarkPhone he’s using and Tony always has a backdoor policy when it comes to keeping an eye on his reckless team. He’s in full anger-mode, ready to pour out rant after rant about how _he told Steve that SHIELD was shady as hell_  and how _he was going to get all the Avengers out of SHIELD immediately and Cap, get your ass back here so that we can start our independent thing pronto_. 

When Steve picked up the call, he was pissed that Tony had no qualms about hacking into his phone and tampering with it but he’s so down and tired after the whole Bucky shock that he sounds subdued as hell. For once, thanks to aggressive sensitivity training from Pepper and some surprising tips from Bruce, Tony awkwardly asks if everything is okay and then cuts off his own question to rephrase it asking how he can help, because he can understand that something is wrong and Tony would rather look for the solution than go through layers of dramatized reacting.

Steve is already touched by Sam’s offer to help but hearing it from Tony, from a guy who is his teammate and who has proven himself a team player time and again, hearing the simple yet kind question makes Steve rethink his secrecy.

So he tells Tony about Bucky. On the phone. Haltingly, leaving a lot to be read between the lines. 

“I’ll be there by tonight” Tony says simply and cuts the call not expecting a thank you or waiting for a protest. Steve grumbles about impulsive decisions and being a burden but then fatigue from his half-healed injuries strikes and he sleeps. When he wakes up, he sees Sam and Tony enthusiastically but in hushed voices, arguing about upgrades to the Falcon suit.

Sam notices him first and pauses before he smiles and says “On your left” something he’s been waiting to say for hours.

Tony looks at Steve and blinks.

“My God Steven, you’ve slept for seventy years and still it’s not enough,” he shakes his head mockingly before snapping his fingers, “Chop chop, get well soon. We’ve got work to do!”

Steve is still tired but he has enough energy to throw a pillow at Tony’s smug face.

It takes him another 12 hours to walk experimentally and another 24 to be completely fine. When he comes back from the hospital to Sam’s house, he finds half of it…Tonyish. There are Tony’s things strewn about everywhere and Sam glares at him before telling him to handle coffee time from now on. Tony himself is busy working on a tracking model and Steve has to drag him physically out of the dump he’s created for himself in the garage area. 

With Tony’s bewildering but frankly impressive model, they track Bucky faster than expected in DC itself. 

Things go horribly wrong, the Captain America exhibit is almost trashed, Tony calls in his suit and Bucky crushes one of its arms.

Sam ends up knocking Bucky out with Steve’s shield when it looks like Bucky would strangle him. Tony makes a sex joke about choking and Sam knocks him out too.

Steve ends up carrying Bucky while Sam is stuck dragging Tony’s ass. 

Tony wakes up and has a loud whining session before he notices that Bucky Barnes is sitting on the couch, looking like a school-kid. Steve looks like he’s going to cry. Sam looks cautious like a bomb is going to burst. Tony blinks at Bucky before giving him his personal hair stylist’s number.

Everybody glares at him but at least Steve looks less like he’s going to cry and more like he’s going to give a patriotic speech.

Tony stays in DC for another two days and absolutely doesn’t get along with Bucky if the other guy’s reaction to his questions and jokes are any indication. Steve threatens him with coffee exile if he asks about the arm again, so Tony spends an entire night making himself a back-up coffee maker with voice code command. 

That seems to make Bucky interested in him. He asks simple but good questions about the AI-ed coffee maker and then about AIs in general. Tony brings out his phone and makes him meet Jarvis. Bucky comes very close to destroying the phone on the “Hello”. Tony sits two feet away from him for an hour after that, but they still talk haltingly.

Then Bucky sees Tony’s arc reactor and that is a scary moment of fight, flight or form logical explanations. Bucky seems tense during the first ten minutes of Tony’s overtly simplified flippant explanation but then he seems more relaxed with him than Sam. 

Steve makes him a delicious cup of coffee for that himself. Tony doesn’t know what he did but he wants to adopt Bucky if Steve makes him coffee again.

When Tony leaves, he brings out his spare-suit and that is the first time any of them see Bucky’s eyes _light up_ , like he’s ecstatic. Steve hints that Bucky had a fascination for science fiction in the past and was dying to see a flying car (that Howard had promised to succeed in but failed) and was more impressed with a flying man. Tony showed off extra when he felt that he had outdone Howard.

Steve’s “Goodbye, Tony” felt a lot like thank you. Maybe it was the soft eyes and the small smile. Maybe it was the hand on his shoulder or the relaxed demeanor and voice. Whatever it was, Tony liked it better than most goodbyes.

He reached the Tower in record time and began a new project. It had an unfortunate acronym but the mission was great. B.A.R.F was pitched to Pepper and the board of Maria Stark Foundation to help the mentally-ill, mind-manipulated and trauma victims get better.

Pepper hadn’t shed a tear even at the Tower’s energy revolution but that day she did. She took over the entire project herself.

It was the project which kept them together in the brief time after their break-up, till they were comfortable to be friends again. 

Rhodey moved in with Tony in that time period and so, whenever Rhodey would go visit DC for work, Tony would try to accompany along and would crash at Sam’s place uninvited. 

After the first three visits, Sam told him to build himself a new bedroom if he was going to continue this. Tony built himself a new house and then, to rub it in, bought the houses of the entire neighborhood. 

Steve made him return the houses that already had people living in it. Sam laughed himself sick when Tony did it with a scowl. Bucky tutted mock-sympathetically and chuckled himself.

Tony bought **him**  a house too as revenge. It made sense in his head but it seemed to have meant a gift in the minds of Steve and Bucky. Steve tried to protest but Bucky took it quickly, telling Steve to let him enjoy the ‘kept man life’. 

Tony had never seen such a tired sigh from Steve in his life. He didn’t understand 1940′s logic.

When the Mandarin struck and Tony issued the furious challenge to the international terrorist, Steve bombarded him with calls that Tony ignored diligently. Pepper was grief-stricken because of Happy and then Tony failed to help her too when Maya Hansen tricked them.

By the time Steve reached Malibu, Tony was rumored dead. It was then that he got a call from Natasha about Hydra hidings, due to which he had to leave. Sam stayed back along with Bucky though, tracking leads with Rhodey.

Rhodey found the lead first but couldn’t get through to Sam because Bucky had disappeared all of a sudden. Rhodey had to go alone and he ended up helping Tony rescue Pepper and himself.

When Tony came back from Mandarin’s hold he found out that Bucky had disappeared/been triggered and called somewhere by Hydra. He could see that they had been tricked into separating so that Bucky could be targetted easily.

B.A.R.F hadn’t been completed and Tony was frustrated that he couldn’t have prevented the disaster. Steve didn’t blame anyone but Sam blamed himself. Sam decided to find Bucky again, alone this time. Steve couldn’t stop him because of the current mission he was involved with.

When the Ultron fiasco happened, Bucky saw it on the news in Bucharest. He had managed to get away from his captors again but he also knew that there were moles everywhere and a few words would be enough to trigger him into a killing machine. So he stayed hidden, no matter how much he wanted to help out Steve, Tony and the others. 

He was furious with Tony for creating Ultron. He was also worried about the idiot because he knew what guilt and involuntary horror could do to a person. He wanted to hit him and protect him.

He was worried about Stevie too but hoped that his inner strength would get them all through the aftermath.

When the Accords rumors started, Bucky felt petrified. When he heard about Tony’s involvement in it, he felt angry but hurt and confused too. 

Tony knew even as Ross threatened them all with the Accords, that signing it was the only way to keep them all together and safe for now. The guilt of Sokovia, the trauma of the victim’s mother, the annoyance of B.A.R.F coming through too late, the strain of Bucky’s absence and Steve’s sadness from it, everything was taking a toll on him.

Steve was trying desperately to save his team or what was left of it. He was teetering on the edge of apathetic depression himself and the implications of the Accords did nothing to calm him down.

Sam stood by Steve because of his reinforced loyalty, his guilt regarding Bucky and his fear of losing another teammate if the Accords choked them.

When the UN explosion happened, Bucky was there, just a few blocks away, trying to find a way to meet Steve and grieve about Peggy’s death. He had thought that he could stay undercover for this day alone, just one day to help his friend in grief. When the news flashed his name, he felt that hope shattering too.

Tony was horrified when Bucky was brought in, by T’Challa no less. He could see Rhodey telling him that they had to follow the law, no matter how hard it was. He could also see Steve looking hopeful and emotional for the first time in months. He didn’t know what to do, didn’t know how to keep Ross off their backs. He tried to get Steve to sign the Accords so that he could compromise with Ross about Bucky but then Wanda’s house arrest slipped out of his mouth and Steve refused to sign it. Tony felt everything drown.

Steve tried to meet Bucky and talk to him in the questioning chamber but then before he could understand anything, he saw Bucky turn into the Winter Soldier. He tried stopping him, tried keeping him from running away but in vain. 

Tony had seen Bucky in the Soldier form before and tried using that knowledge to his advantage to stop him. He tried to get Natasha to do her trick with him, the one that had brought Clint out of Loki’s control once. 

Bucky simply breezed through them all.

Steve brought Bucky down, a whole chopper down actually, in a final ditch attempt. Sam helped him contain Bucky. When Bucky finally came to, Steve and Sam wondered if they should contact Tony about it.Sam suggested i the affirmative but then Steve reminded him about the Accords.

They didn’t got to Tony in the end. Bucky didn’t comment on it but Steve could see him shoot questioning looks all the way to the airport as they tried to escape to Siberia, to stop a new villain, Zemo.

Tony was confused and annoyed that Steve wasn’t listening to him about staying down. He tried again, tried to explain the situation but Steve didn’t have time to spare. He seemed to be in a hurry and when forced with no other option, Tony had to fight him.

He hoped the new Spiderkid would go easy on Bucky because he knew that T’Challa wouldn’t spare him. When the fight seemed to drag on, he issued the signal to Nat. As Wanda held the roof for Steve and Bucky to escape, Natasha confronted them, only to shoot T’Challa and helped them escape.

Tony had to keep pretense though, because Ross was watching. He thought that him and Rhodey were doing an excellent impression of chasing Sam when Rhodey decided to be extra-smart and called Vision to stop Sam’s wings. 

That was when everything went wrong.

In the hospital, as Rhodey underwent tests, Natasha came to ask the further plan and Tony warned her that Ross was still going to capture Steve’s side, which now included her too.

Natasha took the hint and disappeared.

In the prison, Tony took Clint’s taunts calmly, knowing that the place was degrading. He ignored him to the most possible and went to Sam directly. Sam seemed to hesitate but then revealed about Zemo, telling Tony to help Steve out.

Tony was annoyed with Steve and Bucky for hiding it from him but went anyway.

When he entered the Siberian dungeon, he rolled his eyes at Steve and Bucky standing in the ultimate dramatic pose. Steve seemed sheepish about hiding Zemo’s fact but Bucky told them both to grow up and get over it.

When they met Zemo, Tony bet Bucky that he would give a monologue. Bucky lost five bucks in that bet and pointed a gun at Zemo for that in itself. 

Of course, that was when Zemo unleashed the video.

Bucky felt his breathing stop when the video began and his eyes stayed horrifyingly glued to Tony’s face. Steve felt his own heart break at the sights on the grainy display and stood cautiously close to Tony, to offer support.

Tony stayed silent through the entire video.

When it ended, he raised red eyes and stared at Bucky. Steve tensed for an attack.

“Did you remember about this?”

Bucky had no words. He didn’t know how he would admit to it. But he had to. He simply nodded jerkily.

Tony inhaled sharply and shot Steve a side-look with the same question. Steve gave the same answer.

Tony’s hands clenched.

“Do you remember any others?”

“I remember all of them” Bucky’s voice was hoarse.

When Tony stayed silent for an entire minute, Steve feared that he was going to go into a panic attack.

Instead, he took a shaky breath and walked forward, without looking at either of them. When he reached the entrance again, he tilted his head to the side.

“Let’s go home” he said quietly, “I’m tired.”

“Tony…” Bucky started but Tony cut him short.

“You are going to B.A.R.F it all out,” he said fiercely and then turned to Steve, “You are going to handle Ross for me and anybody else who has secrets will handle Pepper for me. Is that understood?”

When Bucky tried to speak again, Steve shot him a look and turned to Tony.

“Understood” he said before pulling Bucky along, “Let’s go home, Tony.”

T’Challa took care of Zemo outside.

Tony didn’t speak with either Steve or Bucky for an entire month after that day. Rhodey and Sam acted as buffers.

Then one day Tony disappeard and Steve got a call telling him and Bucky to come to DC.

When they did, they found Bucky’s house ready and furnished but with a ‘Sale’ board.

Tony made him a deal: He would never talk about Howard or any of his targets, stay in the Tower, never run away again and would join the Avengers. In exchange, Tony would try to forgive him.

Bucky didn’t understand how that made sense but he took it up.

Steve didn’t say goodbye that day but instead moved in himself too.

Tony never told them that he was doing this because he didn’t want to lose a family again. 

They understood it anyway.

**Author's Note:**

> I demand feedback. PLEASE? <3


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